A cross section image (also called “a tomographic image”) that is obtained by photographing each organ is outputted as brightness value information with a gray scale from a medical imaging equipment such as a Computed Tomography (CT) equipment, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment, ultrasonic echo equipment or the like. Currently, a technique is being developed in which a region of a designated organ is extracted based on this brightness value information to put information such as the shape of the organ, the diameter of the vessel or the like to use. Moreover, plural images that are obtained by cutting the three-dimensional space are outputted from a medical diagnosis apparatus (e.g. CT and/or MRI) or ultrasonic measurement apparatus. By performing an image processing to extract a size of an organ to be diagnosed or the length of a disease portion for those images, images for the diagnosis are generated to use them for the diagnosis. On the other hand, as an input for numerical simulation for tracing the blood or the like, an organ model of the vessel is generated from this processing result, and is used.
Such image processing techniques also include a technique for a region extraction processing. Although there are various techniques for the region extraction processing, a technique for extracting regions using a reaction-diffusion equation also exists. However, in the conventional technique for extracting regions using the reaction-diffusion equations, calculation of the reaction-diffusion equation is repeated a lot of times for one pixel. However, when the number of pixels to be processed increases, the processing amount increases for that, and as a result, a problem occurs that the processing time grows longer.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2008-09549
Patent Document 2: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2012-245085